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Another two-day affair - 6-7 October 2010
Oct. 7th, 2010 11:19 pmHi, people. Enjoy the following story of heroism (and base-covering) in action - noticing a truck that looked similar to one involved in a kidnapping report, a man decided to go after it. He was right - it was the right truck. He eventually managed to get the kidnapper to release the girl, mostly by putting his own vehicle in the way of the fleeing vehicle.
Libraries are an essential piece in the fabric that gives the poor access to broadband connections and adults instruction on recent technology and that broadband usage. And we're just abotu the only place that does both of those things for free. So if your country wants to do big rollouts of broadband access, remember that even if the cost problems are solved, someone still has to teach them about Internet safety and security. And, please keep in mind, while the Internet is vast, not everything can be found on-line instantaneously.
Last out, a bit of sports trivia regarding a freakin' impressive feat - Roy Halladay, of the Philadelphia Phillies, threw just the second no-hit game in baseball playoff history, and by doing so, also became the first pitcher to toass a perfect game and a no-hitter in the same season. Which makes .300 all that much more impressive, if someone ever gets it, because the pitchers are getting a lot better.
Out in the world today, a court in Israel ruled that same sex couples are not actually entitled to inheritance under the law, with the judge choosing to ignore the testimony in front of him as to the couple status of the two men in favor of finding an explanation that the relationship was a result of one man trying to dry the other out from drug addiction and that there was no actual romance involved. Appeal is forthcoming, one we hope will restore the couple to their proper status.
In the Continuing Land Wars in Asia Department, Afghan police seized significant amounts of explosive marked as food and tableweare at the border between Afghanistan and Iran. Additionally, the Afghan government is reportedly in talks with the Taliban to end the ongoing war.
Elsewhere, Muslims aired their concerns about the remarks of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, claiming that he has poisoned attitudes toward Muslims in The Netherlands.
Cuts to the United Kingdom's safety net are on the horizon, in an attempt to create a system where those on social sassistance won't actually make as much as someone with a job, and that people with significant wealth will not receive any child-care subsidies. The comments starts out with the usual cesspit of "welfare queens", "unemployed people are lazy/criminals" and "nanny states don't work".
In the United States, the Senate is sitting on 420 bills that the House of Representatives has passed, as of last count. Some of it is probably not that essential, but probability dictates at least some of those bills are important ones.
A little-known corporation by the name of Talx has found a very profitable industry in these down times - fighting unemployment insurance claims through appeals at the behest of employers, so that employers don't have to pay out as much in taxes.
Speaking of corporate skullduggery, banks sometimes break into teh houses of people they claim are in foreclosure and then change the locks, even though the houses are still occupied by the people in the foreclosure process. This is the latest in a string of alleged financial fraud committed by those institutions scrambling to foreclose on as many of the bad loans they gave out so as to cut their losses, fraud that would have been helped by legislation that would streamline the way that notarizations are recognized between states, a bill that passed both houses but will be pocket-vetoed by the President. The fraud alleged is also the subject of a suit from the Ohio Attorney General.
And then there are the other corporations - the ones choosing to buy back significant amounts of their stock with their Big Piles of Cash rather than try and invest it intno creating jobs.
Here's a way to lose an election - run away from the people who want to interview you so that you can get your message out. Well, at least, that should be something that counts against you - it might not, because of our up-is-down style this year. Although, a little birdie tells me that mysteriously disappearing candidates that follow up their claim of being a Satanic Panic-style witch with clearly false claims that they dabbled everywhere else before coming to the conclusion that their current faith is superior to all others and then get confused when their message intended to keep the flock inside the church with the promise of a giant Take That gets roundly mocked by the people outside the church when they hear it.
Times Square Attempted Bomber Faisal Shazad was sentenced to life in prison today, providing evidence that the court sytems can actually prosecute someone accused of terrorism. But don't get complacent or relax - there will be more law enforcement on train routes and elsewhere, officially because it was already planned, but nicely timed with due to the worries of another terror attack coming soon in, say, Europe.
President Obama appoints someone with autism to head the National Council on Disability, adding a group not normally considered part of the disabled and needing civil rights and protections to the fold. Related only in a tangential way, but possibly in the sense of "autism and neurodiversity should be accepted and cherished, instead of one-tracked toward a cure", keeping track of those diseases and deaths that could have been prevented by vaccination, of which fear that autism would develop from vaccination is a leading cause of why some parents choose not to do it.
Less pleasantly about government, have you noticed that "small government" tends to mean outsourcing and contracting government functions to private entities, to provide the sursanure of smaller government at greater cost than if it was done in-house?
The sciences department opens with the release of a survey regarding sex and sexual attitudes among Americans - highlights of the research at first link, the full suite of nine papers is available at Indiana University's website. Of note is the corporate sponsorship by the company that makes the Trojan brand of condoms and other ssex toys, and the establishment of this result as something normal, when I don't see a damn thing about kinky sex in there.
Researchers appear to have created a combination vaccine that will work gainst both smallpox and anthrax.
A Mexican senator suggests the country bail on the ACTA negotiations until it becomes more transparent. The treaty itself may have lost the draconian measures the media cabals were hoping to put in there and make everyone agree to enforce, which might have taken the teeth out of the agreement after swiftly kicking it in the testicles.
In opinions, Maestro Gaius Publius expresses a worry that there's another slow-motion coup in process, one that will mold the American mindset into believing that military people are godly, and that suggests military people are correct to be public in their opposition and/or sabotage initiatives and policies directed at them from the Commander in Chief.
The continuing conventional conservative wisdom about how Republicans are going to thrash the Democrats at the polls because of a unified message and enthusiasm continues.
Offering what they call a starting point, and a few numbers here and there, analysts make their cases as to what parts of the federal government should be excised to bring the budget back under control. Medicaid gets its funding structure reworked, the land wars in Asia are stopped, public education spending vanishes just about completely under the insistence that the feds are duplicating other programs in the states, who then have their budgets cut significantly, pensions are forced to become defined-contribution rather than defined benefit, making it possible for someone to put in a significant amount of money, only to lose it all when the economy goes south on them, abandon the War on (Some) Drugs, axe the FCC, nix agriculture subsidies (which are apparently only going to agribusinesses), toss the Department of Energy, get rid of the Davis-Bacon wage requirements for government contracts, remove any unspent funding from ARRA, use money meant to keep the highways in shape on the highways, privatize all that public land, and get rid of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Carroll takes the case of a law being enforced strangely and uses it as a platform to demand that laws be better-written and criminal acts and penalites be more clearly defined. Actually, we can get behind this one. Because we don't want to suddenly be brought up on charges that we're, say, domestic terrorists because someone didn't like what we said or did, or to be told something is or isn't illegal based on which way the judge rules.
Mr. Carroll also advocated for feeing the military-industrial complex everything it wants on the premise that American military strength must never wane, lest The Boogeymen take over in some part of the world and do something we don't like.
The WSJ contribtues an unsigned editorial claiming that the GOP should run on the Democratc health care record a lot more than they are, betting that the Republicans can successsfully convince the people that it is, in fact, a "government takeover of helth care" and that people should be fighting to keep their private insurance options, just with more competition and trust in the power of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) The Democrats are running away from it right no, so it must be toxic to them, they suggest. Worse, if the Republicans don't start talking about it now, they won't be able to carry it through to 2012 when they really need it.
If, hwoever, the GOP chooses to take the tacitc supplied by Mr. Stossel, who says that insurance companies' responsiblity to their shareholders should trump their responsibility to their customers and that insurance companies deciding to drop coverage for children or employees as a Frak You to new mandates should be cheered, then they're going to hear the doorbell ring. "Who's there?" "Angry Mob!"
Mr. Rove says the Democrats are attacking Republican/Tea Party candidates and others with personal swipes because they want to distract voters from how much worse the economy has gotten under the current administration, despite promises to make it better, and the big poison that is ObamaCare. If these were pedestrian attacks that had no policy or substance to them, we'd be inclined to agree and to smack the Democrats to get back on message. But these are not idle strikes - they're accusations that have policy implications. Saying that your opponent supports forced birth with no exceptions is a personal attack, but also one that says, "Hey, women? This guy doesn't support Roe and will work to overturn it in some way." Saying your opponent believes in "Second Amendment remedies" implies a possible policy implication that people should be allowed to shoot government that they feel is working against them. There is reason to these things. Pointing out hypocrisy in your opponent is also usually useful from a policy perspective. Mr. Sowell considers it to be "red herring politics", for example, to say anti-illegal immigration crusader Meg Whitman employed an undocumented worker for years and not pay attention to the record of appointments and decisions by her opponent that speak to his liberal bona fides, things that are clearly more dangerous in the opinion of Mr. Sowell. He does actually make the point we're trying to about hypocrisy in saying people should be paying attention to the flip-flops and movement of principles by many establishent candidates over the course of their careers, from which it logicaly follows that one should also be paying attention to how a newcomer might vote on those issues based on their beliefs and actions. Which means paying attention to personal things that have policy implications. Negative campaigning is an established part of our process, and negative ads that have a purpose can be very useful. If we were looking into things like the sex lives of the campaigners, it wouldn't be relevant on whether or not they support immigration, but if they had crusaded as the chapter President of the anti-sex league and were threatening to make it a policy that their personal beliefs should be the laws everyone else has to live by, then I think we'd want to know more about what they've been doing personally and whether they're flaming hypocrites or not.
Speaking of economics, Mr.W. Williams attempts a patronizing lesson in basic economics, that taxes always affect people other than for whom they are intended, in the form of higher prices, lower dividends, and layoffs, but ends up only pointing out that we consider it normal for corporations to pass the buck and not pay taxes instead of absrbing costs themselves. In trying to blame the politicians for the reason why prices go up and people get laid off, Mr. Williams highlights that decisions have to be made at the corporate level on what to do about taxes, and that corporations prefer options that hurt others instead of their own profits. Responsibility to shareholders and all that. There may be exploitation of economic ignorance, but it's by the corporations and columnists who point at the politicians and blame them for everything that went wrong, when the Board of Directors is the place where the decision to raise prices, lay off workers, give the CEO a bonus for making such tough decisions, and then and push up the profits is made.
And on the moral front, Mr. T Williams says the President sends the wrong message about culture and acceptable behavior when he mentions that he has rappers on his iPod, because rappers are misogynists who perpetuate negative stereotypes of black culture and the President is supposed to be a morally-uplifting man and a good role model for black people. Someone want to talk about a raised bar for black expectations on this one, instead of the usual copmlaints that we hold black people to a lower standard than white people? For more examples of this raised standard, Mr. Miller is disheartened at the way that black advocacy groups are consistently aligning themselves with forces that will hurt them and prevent them from realizing the greatness of American exceptionalism, like various socialist groups, because all that black people really need is to be treated like white people, adopt conservative pro-life values, and do bootstrap-pulling work with no government interference while rejecting the calls of groups that say black people have been hurt in the past and are continuing to be discriminated against today. The standard required of a black man to live a life that is acceptable is so very much higher than that of a white man, because the black man will have the fact that he's black thrown in his face every time he does something good or bad.
Last out of opinions, and staying with morality, Mr. Feiler attacks the conclusions of the Pew survey on religious knowledge, saying that it's much more positive about the religious than the survey itself concludes. His truths, in this case, that should make you feel better about religion:
Last for tonight, an irresponsible person describes what they were thinking when they took their chicken to the vet, and Kurt Vonnegut provides his frank opinion of what the government thinks about military members.
Libraries are an essential piece in the fabric that gives the poor access to broadband connections and adults instruction on recent technology and that broadband usage. And we're just abotu the only place that does both of those things for free. So if your country wants to do big rollouts of broadband access, remember that even if the cost problems are solved, someone still has to teach them about Internet safety and security. And, please keep in mind, while the Internet is vast, not everything can be found on-line instantaneously.
Last out, a bit of sports trivia regarding a freakin' impressive feat - Roy Halladay, of the Philadelphia Phillies, threw just the second no-hit game in baseball playoff history, and by doing so, also became the first pitcher to toass a perfect game and a no-hitter in the same season. Which makes .300 all that much more impressive, if someone ever gets it, because the pitchers are getting a lot better.
Out in the world today, a court in Israel ruled that same sex couples are not actually entitled to inheritance under the law, with the judge choosing to ignore the testimony in front of him as to the couple status of the two men in favor of finding an explanation that the relationship was a result of one man trying to dry the other out from drug addiction and that there was no actual romance involved. Appeal is forthcoming, one we hope will restore the couple to their proper status.
In the Continuing Land Wars in Asia Department, Afghan police seized significant amounts of explosive marked as food and tableweare at the border between Afghanistan and Iran. Additionally, the Afghan government is reportedly in talks with the Taliban to end the ongoing war.
Elsewhere, Muslims aired their concerns about the remarks of Dutch politician Geert Wilders, claiming that he has poisoned attitudes toward Muslims in The Netherlands.
Cuts to the United Kingdom's safety net are on the horizon, in an attempt to create a system where those on social sassistance won't actually make as much as someone with a job, and that people with significant wealth will not receive any child-care subsidies. The comments starts out with the usual cesspit of "welfare queens", "unemployed people are lazy/criminals" and "nanny states don't work".
In the United States, the Senate is sitting on 420 bills that the House of Representatives has passed, as of last count. Some of it is probably not that essential, but probability dictates at least some of those bills are important ones.
A little-known corporation by the name of Talx has found a very profitable industry in these down times - fighting unemployment insurance claims through appeals at the behest of employers, so that employers don't have to pay out as much in taxes.
Speaking of corporate skullduggery, banks sometimes break into teh houses of people they claim are in foreclosure and then change the locks, even though the houses are still occupied by the people in the foreclosure process. This is the latest in a string of alleged financial fraud committed by those institutions scrambling to foreclose on as many of the bad loans they gave out so as to cut their losses, fraud that would have been helped by legislation that would streamline the way that notarizations are recognized between states, a bill that passed both houses but will be pocket-vetoed by the President. The fraud alleged is also the subject of a suit from the Ohio Attorney General.
And then there are the other corporations - the ones choosing to buy back significant amounts of their stock with their Big Piles of Cash rather than try and invest it intno creating jobs.
Here's a way to lose an election - run away from the people who want to interview you so that you can get your message out. Well, at least, that should be something that counts against you - it might not, because of our up-is-down style this year. Although, a little birdie tells me that mysteriously disappearing candidates that follow up their claim of being a Satanic Panic-style witch with clearly false claims that they dabbled everywhere else before coming to the conclusion that their current faith is superior to all others and then get confused when their message intended to keep the flock inside the church with the promise of a giant Take That gets roundly mocked by the people outside the church when they hear it.
Times Square Attempted Bomber Faisal Shazad was sentenced to life in prison today, providing evidence that the court sytems can actually prosecute someone accused of terrorism. But don't get complacent or relax - there will be more law enforcement on train routes and elsewhere, officially because it was already planned, but nicely timed with due to the worries of another terror attack coming soon in, say, Europe.
President Obama appoints someone with autism to head the National Council on Disability, adding a group not normally considered part of the disabled and needing civil rights and protections to the fold. Related only in a tangential way, but possibly in the sense of "autism and neurodiversity should be accepted and cherished, instead of one-tracked toward a cure", keeping track of those diseases and deaths that could have been prevented by vaccination, of which fear that autism would develop from vaccination is a leading cause of why some parents choose not to do it.
Less pleasantly about government, have you noticed that "small government" tends to mean outsourcing and contracting government functions to private entities, to provide the sursanure of smaller government at greater cost than if it was done in-house?
The sciences department opens with the release of a survey regarding sex and sexual attitudes among Americans - highlights of the research at first link, the full suite of nine papers is available at Indiana University's website. Of note is the corporate sponsorship by the company that makes the Trojan brand of condoms and other ssex toys, and the establishment of this result as something normal, when I don't see a damn thing about kinky sex in there.
Researchers appear to have created a combination vaccine that will work gainst both smallpox and anthrax.
A Mexican senator suggests the country bail on the ACTA negotiations until it becomes more transparent. The treaty itself may have lost the draconian measures the media cabals were hoping to put in there and make everyone agree to enforce, which might have taken the teeth out of the agreement after swiftly kicking it in the testicles.
In opinions, Maestro Gaius Publius expresses a worry that there's another slow-motion coup in process, one that will mold the American mindset into believing that military people are godly, and that suggests military people are correct to be public in their opposition and/or sabotage initiatives and policies directed at them from the Commander in Chief.
The continuing conventional conservative wisdom about how Republicans are going to thrash the Democrats at the polls because of a unified message and enthusiasm continues.
Offering what they call a starting point, and a few numbers here and there, analysts make their cases as to what parts of the federal government should be excised to bring the budget back under control. Medicaid gets its funding structure reworked, the land wars in Asia are stopped, public education spending vanishes just about completely under the insistence that the feds are duplicating other programs in the states, who then have their budgets cut significantly, pensions are forced to become defined-contribution rather than defined benefit, making it possible for someone to put in a significant amount of money, only to lose it all when the economy goes south on them, abandon the War on (Some) Drugs, axe the FCC, nix agriculture subsidies (which are apparently only going to agribusinesses), toss the Department of Energy, get rid of the Davis-Bacon wage requirements for government contracts, remove any unspent funding from ARRA, use money meant to keep the highways in shape on the highways, privatize all that public land, and get rid of the Federal Reserve.
Mr. Carroll takes the case of a law being enforced strangely and uses it as a platform to demand that laws be better-written and criminal acts and penalites be more clearly defined. Actually, we can get behind this one. Because we don't want to suddenly be brought up on charges that we're, say, domestic terrorists because someone didn't like what we said or did, or to be told something is or isn't illegal based on which way the judge rules.
Mr. Carroll also advocated for feeing the military-industrial complex everything it wants on the premise that American military strength must never wane, lest The Boogeymen take over in some part of the world and do something we don't like.
The WSJ contribtues an unsigned editorial claiming that the GOP should run on the Democratc health care record a lot more than they are, betting that the Republicans can successsfully convince the people that it is, in fact, a "government takeover of helth care" and that people should be fighting to keep their private insurance options, just with more competition and trust in the power of The Market (A.P.T.I.N.) The Democrats are running away from it right no, so it must be toxic to them, they suggest. Worse, if the Republicans don't start talking about it now, they won't be able to carry it through to 2012 when they really need it.
If, hwoever, the GOP chooses to take the tacitc supplied by Mr. Stossel, who says that insurance companies' responsiblity to their shareholders should trump their responsibility to their customers and that insurance companies deciding to drop coverage for children or employees as a Frak You to new mandates should be cheered, then they're going to hear the doorbell ring. "Who's there?" "Angry Mob!"
Mr. Rove says the Democrats are attacking Republican/Tea Party candidates and others with personal swipes because they want to distract voters from how much worse the economy has gotten under the current administration, despite promises to make it better, and the big poison that is ObamaCare. If these were pedestrian attacks that had no policy or substance to them, we'd be inclined to agree and to smack the Democrats to get back on message. But these are not idle strikes - they're accusations that have policy implications. Saying that your opponent supports forced birth with no exceptions is a personal attack, but also one that says, "Hey, women? This guy doesn't support Roe and will work to overturn it in some way." Saying your opponent believes in "Second Amendment remedies" implies a possible policy implication that people should be allowed to shoot government that they feel is working against them. There is reason to these things. Pointing out hypocrisy in your opponent is also usually useful from a policy perspective. Mr. Sowell considers it to be "red herring politics", for example, to say anti-illegal immigration crusader Meg Whitman employed an undocumented worker for years and not pay attention to the record of appointments and decisions by her opponent that speak to his liberal bona fides, things that are clearly more dangerous in the opinion of Mr. Sowell. He does actually make the point we're trying to about hypocrisy in saying people should be paying attention to the flip-flops and movement of principles by many establishent candidates over the course of their careers, from which it logicaly follows that one should also be paying attention to how a newcomer might vote on those issues based on their beliefs and actions. Which means paying attention to personal things that have policy implications. Negative campaigning is an established part of our process, and negative ads that have a purpose can be very useful. If we were looking into things like the sex lives of the campaigners, it wouldn't be relevant on whether or not they support immigration, but if they had crusaded as the chapter President of the anti-sex league and were threatening to make it a policy that their personal beliefs should be the laws everyone else has to live by, then I think we'd want to know more about what they've been doing personally and whether they're flaming hypocrites or not.
Speaking of economics, Mr.W. Williams attempts a patronizing lesson in basic economics, that taxes always affect people other than for whom they are intended, in the form of higher prices, lower dividends, and layoffs, but ends up only pointing out that we consider it normal for corporations to pass the buck and not pay taxes instead of absrbing costs themselves. In trying to blame the politicians for the reason why prices go up and people get laid off, Mr. Williams highlights that decisions have to be made at the corporate level on what to do about taxes, and that corporations prefer options that hurt others instead of their own profits. Responsibility to shareholders and all that. There may be exploitation of economic ignorance, but it's by the corporations and columnists who point at the politicians and blame them for everything that went wrong, when the Board of Directors is the place where the decision to raise prices, lay off workers, give the CEO a bonus for making such tough decisions, and then and push up the profits is made.
And on the moral front, Mr. T Williams says the President sends the wrong message about culture and acceptable behavior when he mentions that he has rappers on his iPod, because rappers are misogynists who perpetuate negative stereotypes of black culture and the President is supposed to be a morally-uplifting man and a good role model for black people. Someone want to talk about a raised bar for black expectations on this one, instead of the usual copmlaints that we hold black people to a lower standard than white people? For more examples of this raised standard, Mr. Miller is disheartened at the way that black advocacy groups are consistently aligning themselves with forces that will hurt them and prevent them from realizing the greatness of American exceptionalism, like various socialist groups, because all that black people really need is to be treated like white people, adopt conservative pro-life values, and do bootstrap-pulling work with no government interference while rejecting the calls of groups that say black people have been hurt in the past and are continuing to be discriminated against today. The standard required of a black man to live a life that is acceptable is so very much higher than that of a white man, because the black man will have the fact that he's black thrown in his face every time he does something good or bad.
Last out of opinions, and staying with morality, Mr. Feiler attacks the conclusions of the Pew survey on religious knowledge, saying that it's much more positive about the religious than the survey itself concludes. His truths, in this case, that should make you feel better about religion:
- Americans know more about religion than almost any other topic. Because the control questions show how stupid the population is on other matters, like politics, government, maths, science, and the other Things you Should Have Learned In School (Had You Been Paying Attention) it should be encouraging to see that they're so well-versed in religion. Yay? No. Being smart on religion does not excuse the stupid elsewhere. and, as we'll see, it's not actual smart on the religion, just the veneer of it.
- Believers still dominate in America; atheists are still rare. And the believers are totally diverse, once you get past the point that they're almost all Abrahamic faiths. Feel safe, America - at no point are you going to have to worry that your hegemonic position as people of monotheistic faith is going to be challenged. You can still safely ignore that vocal minority that insists you should actually do as your Constitution says regarding religion and government.
- Americans know as much about other religions as they know about their own.. They know the faiths of the countries and people in the news a lot, so we're doing just fine in our religious knowledge. Nevermind that they failed out on a significant part of actually knowing the precepts of those faiths, knowledge that Pakistan is predominantly Muslim is apparently enough. Deeper understanding? Actual interaction with people of other faiths in good faith? What's that? So, really, Americans aren't all that brilliant on religion, either, if their surface knowledge does not actually include what other faiths believe and understand.
Last for tonight, an irresponsible person describes what they were thinking when they took their chicken to the vet, and Kurt Vonnegut provides his frank opinion of what the government thinks about military members.
